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Category Archives: Q&A Fridays

Sorry about last Friday, folks. I was out of town and despite my increasing tablet skills, updating a blog or website from a tablet and a HotSpot remains outside my skill set, at least on a level of competence I’m comfortable with 🙂

Today’s question is one I get a good bit from time to time, especially about certain characters, and that is;

Where do your character ideas come from?

There is no one size fits all answer for that question, partly because there’s no ‘formula’ that I follow in setting up characters or story lines.

Sometimes I write a story line for a character that I’ve come up with, and other times I write a character to fit inside a story I want to tell. So many people write and tell me “You know, I have someone like Billy in my family” or “I know a guy that’s a lot like Roland” or “Parno reminds me of this character or that guy” and so forth.

To tell you the truth, that’s usually what I’m looking to do. Almost all of us know someone like Billy Todd. A person who has challenges but doesn’t allow those challenges to rule them. To box them in or define them as people, or decide how they live. Those individuals are some of the people that I have the greatest respect for. Despite the curves life has thrown at them, they refuse to just lie down but instead meet life head on.

You simply cannot fail to respect someone like that, in my opinion. So many times I see people who overcome issues like that and it makes me question myself. Could I be that strong? Could I overcome that difficulty, or deal with that situation? I know it can be done because I see people who do, but would I, personally, have that kind of strength? Would I have the determination to overcome? To keep plugging away regardless of how hopeless it might seem to others?

Like most of you I daresay, I’d like to hope that I would. And, again like most of you I suspect, I always enjoy seeing someone triumph over such difficulties. It’s uplifting, it’s motivating, it’s inspirational.

Some of my characters are sometimes based loosely on people I’ve known in real life. Not directly of course, but in toto. For instance, a character in a story I’ve created might have a trait from this person I knew, and another trait from someone else I knew, and so on down the line.

In other words, the character isn’t a direct representative of any one person I’ve known, but a combination of traits that I’ve encountered among several people over my life. A little here, a little there, and a little bit more from over ‘yonder’ so to speak. I always strive for realism, so I try to use real character traits. There is no ‘perfect’ person, so there aren’t any ‘perfect’ characters in my stories.

People make mistakes. People have character flaws. People do wrong things. People do good things. People do bad things, though perhaps for a good reason. That’s real life, and I try to make my books and stories about ‘real’ people, insofar as I strive to create characters that you, the reader, can look at and go ‘yeah, I know a guy/gal like that’. Or even ‘that’s what I would have done in that situation’.

Or in some cases you may say ‘there’s no way I’d have done that the same way’. Since real life is sometimes flawed, characters in good stories should have those flaws too, in my opinion. My goal is always to create a good story that is not only entertaining, but believable.

I mean, we’ve all read the story where the hero had been beat up repeatedly, shot three times, gone days without rest, food or water, but still manages to save the world, right? Same for the movies. But let’s be reasonable. There’s very few people who are capable of that kind of thing. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility of course, as is proven by many of the men entitled to wear the Medal of Honor. But it’s unusual. Rare.

There are some truly incredible people in the world, however. Capable of going beyond even what they themselves believed they were able to accomplish. Sometimes they are motivated by something within themselves, sometimes by outside factors such as a great leader. The thing that strikes me the most, though, is that when you speak to such people, they’re, well, people. They aren’t machines, they aren’t robots, they’re people; incredible people to be sure, but they’re real.

I always hope to ‘create’ such real people, real characters, in my writing. I don’t think I have a single character that would come close to the definition of ‘perfect’. But then I’ve never met a perfect person in real life, either.

So there’s really no absolute ‘rule’ for character creation for me. The only real litmus test for anything I do is that it needs to be ‘real’. The reader needs to be able to believe that the character could be real, and could really accomplish what he/she is doing.

Now, that doesn’t include certain genres that I sometimes dabble in, such as the fantasy or supernatural realm, but those terms themselves are indicative of the character not being real. That’s the whole point, after all. A character that’s beyond anything we are, in a story that’s beyond anything we’ll ever encounter.

And even then I strive to avoid the ‘perfect’ character tag. Even those characters that are larger than life are usually still flawed in some way, even if it’s only minor. And I think that’s important because it still allows the reader to connect with that character even though they can’t honestly identify with someone who has abilities or ‘powers’ that otherwise transcend real life.

The bottom line is, any character you create is limited by only two things; your own life experiences, and your imagination. Your life experiences help you make characters that ‘feel real’, while you imagination makes those same characters fascinating because of their individual qualities and the situations they find themselves in.

A second question today is more of a sidebar in this case, and that is; “When will we see Friggin’ Zombies?”

The answer is soon, but I don’t have an absolute date as of this writing. I know that the cover work is finished other than whatever ‘tweaking’ the artist does (and I have to say it was pretty cool. I’ll be posting the final rendering here when I get it) and the type/proofing is all but finished. So it’s possible we may see it even later this weekend on Amazon, or early next week.

When it’s ready, however, I’ll post a notice here, on Facebook, and Twitter as I always try to do.

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to send me a comment, or to ask a question. I always enjoy it, even if it does take me some time to get around to providing an answer. I always assume that you’d rather I be writing than talking, though 😛

It is that time once more! I could have sworn I just did this yesterday this last week went by so fast. Sometimes it seems there’s not enough time in the day anymore.

I chose two questions today that are asked fairly frequently in e-mails that I receive. The first one is,

where do you get your ideas?

That’s a good question, and I’m not sure I know the exact answer. I’ve always had a pretty good imagination. As a child I read a great deal, everything from sci-fi to the World Book of Knowledge (yes, I’m that old). I’m very fortunate in that most of what I read will stick with me, at least for a while, and it’s possible that all of that reading helps my imagination work like it does.

It honestly seems sometimes as if there’s no way to have an actual ‘original’ idea anymore. Everything you write is simply a new twist or turn on an old idea or theme. I try to work around that and come up with truly unique ideas, but I don’t always succeed. And sometimes I do have a great original idea but I just can’t find a way to make it work in a story line. Once in a while you just have to give up and move on I suppose. I hate doing that to be honest, but sometimes you simply hit a brick wall that won’t come down no matter how hard you slam your head into it.

When a notion comes to me I’ll write it down. Then, even as I’m doing something else my mind seems to always be turning that idea over, looking at it from every angle I can think of. Sometimes I’m able to turn that into a story, and sometimes I can’t. But in all honesty, I never know where the next idea will come from. I’ll give you a for instance that’s a bit of a spoiler.

Even though “Friggin’ Zombies” has yet to be released, I’ve already started a new Zombie novel based on youngsters in my own family. The idea popped into my head and wouldn’t go away, so now it’s already several pages along as I work to flesh out the characters and the plot. The idea that gave life to this new story was as simple as ‘how well do you think ‘so and so’ would do in the Zombie apocalypse?’

Which led me to evaluate the young people in my own family, which led me to the conclusion that they would probably do okay, since they’re all rough and tumble and can shoot the wings off a fly (and that’s only a slight exaggeration).

So that’s a peek into my thought process, such as it is. I admit that sometimes it simply doesn’t make sense, even to me. I go through a lot of paper though sketching outlines that never amount to anything, 🙂

The second question is one I’m sure all writers get from time to time, and it’s fairly simple; how do you find time to write?

You don’t. You make time to write. You have to decide if you want to write or not, and then make time to make it happen. That means you have to listen to the game on Saturday instead of watch it. It means you catch up on your favorite TV shows when you’ve got a writer’s block instead of watching it every week when it’s fresh.

You have to prioritize your time. You learn to carry a notebook and a pen/pencil everywhere you go because you never know when a good line or idea will hit you, and if you don’t write it down you may forget it later. I’ve lost many a good one-liners due to lack of a writing instrument.

There are times when you don’t want to write. You want to watch the game, you want to read someone else’s work, you want to catch a movie with your spouse or take them to dinner, but. . .you write instead as long as the words are flowing. If you don’t, then you won’t make it.

The thing is, it gets easier to do as you go along. Maybe it’s a habit you get into or it’s simply a state of mind that you acquire as you mature as a writer, but it becomes less of a challenge to ‘find’ time to write. And once you have a book or a magazine article in print, that’s about the best motivation you’ll ever imagine for ‘finding’ time to write more. If you want to write, then you have to make time to actually write.

And whatever you’re doing, write. You may write two hundred pages of something that will never see the light of day and think it’s a complete waste, but it wasn’t because you learned something about your craft as you wrote it. Maybe you learned how to better describe a character’s traits or actions, or perhaps how to better lay out a story line or introduce a new story or character. Whatever it might be, you can just about be sure that somewhere in that two hundred pages that you may despise as a waste of your time, you learned something that’s going to make you a better writer down the road.

So don’t think of it as wasted. If you have to have a category for it, consider it ‘practice’. Whatever you’re doing in life, you have to practice in order to get good at it. Writing is no different. It’s work, and it takes dedication and discipline, both of which are as important as any kind of ‘natural’ talent because if you don’t have the discipline to do the work, then you’ll never make use of that talent.

I’ll end today’s session with this word of advice to anyone who wants to write; DO IT. Make time, sit down at the desk or wherever you choose to work, and just start hammering away. You may hate that first effort, and you may still be hating at the tenth effort, but you’ll be better by then, too.

Full Disclosure?

I've seen a lot of people who review books and what not posting information about the fact that they receive books from people for free in order to review them. Apparently that's in compliance with some sort of law, or legal action.
I have occasionally posted reviews here on this blog, as anyone who reads it knows. I'm not a professional reviewer, or even really an amateur. I just like to read, and then share what I've read. That's all.
Every book I've ever posted a review for on this blog, I bought. Period. No one paid me or anything else. I just wanted to share my thoughts.
So with no idea whether I needed to state this or not, here ya go.
NC

I am a freelance Photographer born and raised in the Southeast. I have uprooted my life in Macon Georgia for a new life as an unlikely cowgirl in love with a handsome cowboy in Wyoming. I hope you enjoy my photo journal on life, love, and the spirit of Wyoming.